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Hi guys
I was directed to this theory of Hood's sinking in a page on Facebook. This may not be new to some of you but it is to me and seems logical and convincing, I leave it to you to digest to make up your own minds. Warning, its a long read but IMHO worth it.
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As happens every so often, we get the same myth and legends regarding the loss of HMS Hood parroted within the groups. I am reposting this for those who have not seen it. No doubt I'll post it again in the future. It's an involved read and you'll need to take some time to take in the information. Many of you have read it many times before so feel free to scroll past. For those that haven't I hope you learn something.
It is often stated that there are many theories regarding Hood's loss and we cannot say which one is correct and therefore will never know the truth.
This isn't an entirely accurate statement. There are certain, very specific elements we will never know ( the vaguaries of Naval Gunnery, balistics and a shells interactions with the ship it's hitting make this an all round truism ) but for the majority it's actually relatively easy in this case to pinpoint the reasons and the likely trail of events.
We often hear that the shell "was seen to hit the boat deck" and therefore this was the most likely path to Hood's loss. ( It's 1 of the reasons we get the plunging fire/weak decks, myth.)
This however, could NOT be further from the truth as I will attempt to explain.
Firstly regarding witness testimony. From the first inquiry to Hood's loss, in the summary letter there is the following line "It was noticeable that in many cases the evidence was contradictory and it was only by question and answer and general conversation that the reliability of witnesses could be gauged."
This fits with what we know about witness testimony. Of course it is a vital part of any investigation, however the human mind can be coloured by a great many things and when the testimony varies so wildly, as it does in this case, picking out what is accurate and what is not can be incredibly difficult.
Further this line "The actual position of the hit was not seen except by one observer, who stated that it was in the same locality as the third salvo (somewhere near the mainmast)". Just 1 singular observer, out of all the evidence, placed the hit around the mainmast. It's entirely possible that there was a hit at the mainmast, but there may well have been multiple hits, which would explain the confusion. The eyes are drawn to that which is most noticeable, and a boatdeck hit would most certainly draw the eye.
Before moving on, this paragraph is important and indeed corroborates what we were saying above :
"As might be expected in connection with such a sudden, unexpected, and stupendous happening, and the lapse of time since its occurrence, the evidence is largely confused and contradictory. It was noticeable that batches of witnesses who came from the same action stations tended to give similar evidence. This would be accounted for, not only because they would have had the same view, but because they would have talked the matter over among themselves both at the time and later. Greater weight has naturally been given to evidence of the more highly trained witnesses, but it is clear that no witness can be entirely reliable on every point. Thus Captain Leach and Lieutenant-Commander Rowell definitely testify to the appearance of the major explosion just before the mainmast; we must consider them reliable on this point and other witnesses support their evidence."
Captain Leach, himself, talks about the fire on the boatdeck from the 3rd salvo hit. ( Which turned out to be a hit by Prinz Eugen's HE shells ). Then these are his EXACT words describing the 5th salvo from Bismarck....
"I happened to be looking at "Hood" at the moment when a salvo arrived and it appeared to be across the ship somewhere about the mainmast" Now the language used here is important. He doesn't say she was hit at the mainmast. He says the Salvo was across the ship, about the mainmast, meaning roughly in line with the mainmast.
To put this in perspective the majority of the eye witnesses on POW were on the port side, bridges or directors. Hits were claimed from X Turret all the way to the aft funnel, on the deck, on the side and some saw no hits at all.
To say with any certainty that it was a singular hit to the boatdeck is frankly impossible. They could also have been taking the earlier boatdeck hit and fire and confusing it with the kill shot. Easily done. Using the Inquiry in such a way isn't helpful when you don't take into account the vaguearies of witness testimony.
A couple of examples. Ted Briggs himself claimed in his testimony that Hood had earlier done a 40 degree turn to starboard and her final turn was a 40 degree to port. This is categorically in error and wrong. This from a man who was stood on the bridge with the ship Commanders.
I have a friend who has first hand experience of this as a result of some of the investigations he had carried out "live" over the years. The one thing that amazes him is how the human mind is capable of contorting reality.
In one case he was faced with 3 survivor testimonies, all just about as contradictory as they could be ( atleast the survivors acknowledged being on the same ship ), but three trained observers, all reported totally different courses of events and none tallied with those from another ship in company.
In another investigation a survivor CLEARLY remembers seeing an explosion which wrecked part of the ship, which he was actually standing on at the time and the survey of the wreck shows the explosion to have taken place over 100ft away.
Often the witnesses were simply telling the investigations what they thought they wanted to hear. So you have to corroborate testimony with hard evidence.
In actuality it's probable that Hood took multiple hits, but that a boatdeck hit, if it happened, would draw the eyes of the witnesses and it's probable that, that, along with the venting around the mainmast made them associate this in their mind with the hit.
Meanwhile the killshot ( as you will read later ) would have seemed to be a short and much easier for the brain to ignore.
Which brings us to what the Inquiry didn't have. That is details of the wreck. Contrary to what many try to say, the wreck tells us a great deal of what happened to Hood and why, even though there is no piece of metal with a nice round 15inch hole shouting "X marks the spot".
Cordite explosions in warships are a known quantity. We have plenty of direct evidence of what happens and what you would epect to see. The Jutland wrecks are the best example of this.
Hood's wreck is quite different to the Jutland wrecks. A cordite detonation only maintains it's destructive pressure, whilst the explosion is in an enclosed environment. The MOMENT that it vents out to the atmosphere it loses all that pressure and the explosion stops dead. You can see this happening when HMS Lion had her Q turret roof blown off after a flash accident in the gunhouse.
All the ships that suffered mag explosions at Jutland had very similair damage profiles. That being that the explosions only travelled up the length of the ship the same distance as the beam of the ship. This is because the moment the sides ( and in some cases the bottom ) blows out, the pressure vents and the force of the explosion stops.
Hood is different to this. Rather than just being basically equivalent to the beam of the ship, the destruction is far futher forward than would be expected and goes all the way to the forward engine room. This is how we can pick out of the witness testimony, some accurate points. The venting abreast and around the main mast is from the 4inch magazine, that was set off from a shell from Bismarck's 5th salvo, venting forward through the large engineering spaces and up the exhaust vents to the boat deck. The large spaces allowed the gases to expand into and through the ship.
This explains the extra damage, and the pause between the salvo landing, then the venting and then the destruction of the aft end of the ship and also that the initial flame was NOT the main mags.
So we have what happened and we have the basic area on the starboard side where a shell would have to hit to set off the trail of events in the order that is specified.
So now we need the why.
We can now look at the various theories.
The secondary mags had been altered in 1940. Extra 4inch ammo was placed in the old 5.5inch mags and further extended into the small arms room. This butted right up to the aft bulkhead of the aft engine room. Despite the main mags being protected this was not fully protected from a longtitudinally travelling shell entering the aft engine space.
This aft bulkhead was only 3/4 inch HT steel and covered with splinter matting. The addition of splinter matting shows that the Admiralty were aware this may be an issue. Any damage to that bulkhead would give the secondary mag gases access to the aft engine spaces and then up to the vents near the mainmast.
These mags ran like a fuse right up to and around the bulkheads of X magazine cordite store. It wouldn't even need to blow this bulkhead out as cordite was very temperature sensitive so superheating the bulkhead would have been enough to detonate the main cordite store.
So we understand A leads to B leads to C. The sequence of events is understood and confirmed and happened in the order stated. So our only question is what started the sequence?
We know both ships were travelling at atleast 28knots. We have a fairly good idea of the range and a very good idea of the baring ( extrapolating from Prince of Wales and Prinz Eugen ). We also know Hood was in her final port turn, as evidenced from all 3 survivors and the rudder on the wreck. Also some of the witness testimony from POW said she was turning.
We have the German's gunnery manual GKDOS100, with range, angle of fall and velocity data. So finally ;o) here are our major theories.
Hit in the torpedos detonating the ship.
A shell from PE.
The fire on the boat deck from an earlier hit by PE.
A pure deck hit, on the boat deck at the main mast.
A hit on the fcsle deck.
A hit through the main belt.
A torpedoing "diving shell" via a short, hit.
A hit through the 7inch middle belt, through the weak slope
protection.
Destroyed herself like at Jutalnd due to catastrophic ammo handling practices.
As per Marco Santorini, a hit into the 4inch handling room via the upper decks and a flash into the magazines from above.
We can throw out 1. ( Hit to the Torpedos )The inquiry found this was a no go and it doesn't match with the events we established as they would have blown out the side of the ship before a main mag detonation. Also the inquiry found that even with a direct hit it was very unlikely for all the torpedo warheads to explode. Also the explosion of Hood's mags was universally said to be almost silent and a detonation of these warheads most certainly would not have been.
We can throw out 9 ( Bad ammo handling as per Jutland ) too. It doesn't fit what was witnessed, or the timeline. Also after Jutland those same issues never occured again and new orders were adhered to and practised rigorously at sea.
We can also throw out number 10. ( Santorini's 4inch handling room hit ) I'll go more into this when we get to number 4, but ALL the 4 inch QF supply tunnels and scuttles would have been absolutely locked up tight.
When giving evidence Captain Davies who had previously served on hood says this
Question 33 : Can you tell us what would be the state of the doors of the 4" supply?
"The 4" ammunition supply doors in the ship were closed until the Captain passed the order "supply 4" ammunition." This organisation resulted from an incident when the ship was bombed at the end of September or beginning of October 1939, as it was found that 4" ammunition was being replenished before any order had been given. I can visually confirm that this procedure was rigidly adhered to as I was on the boat deck during subsequent bombings of the ship during the action off Oran"
We can now throw out 2 ( A shell hit from PE ) PE was not only firing HE shells ( Even if firing AP she had absolutely zero chance of penetrating Hood's armour ), but by the time Hood's loss came along she had switched her fire to POW for several minutes.
Now onto 4 ( A pure deck hit, on the boat deck at the main mast ) and 5 ( A hit on the Fcsle deck ). The myth of weak decks and plunging fire has lasted over 70 years and it is about time it was put to bed for good. The truth is that at the range she was sunk ( 16,500 yards ) and a fair way further out ( atleast 22k yards and possibly as much as 25k in certain circumstances ), a deck hit in that area or even through the fcsle deck gets nowhere near the mags. It is a physical impossibility unless you change the laws of physics. At this range with only an 11 degree AOF ( As per the German's gunnery manual ), the majority of the shells travel is horizontal. To deflect it away from that would require essentially the full 12 inches of plate armour of Hood's main belt. There is NOTHING that high on the ship capable of deflecting that shell on it's trajectory.
If the fuse works ( The average for the Krupp 14.96inch shell was 0.035 seconds ), it detonates above the main deck.
If it's a dud, if it isn't stopped by any internal structure, it would simply fly clean out the other side of the ship, getting nowhere near doing anything bad to the magazines. It may make a mess but it would do nothing important to endager the survival of the ship.
It would have to deviate down to such an extent it'd essentially be like stopping, turning the shell almost completely down AND left, then restarting again.
Anybody that suggests this to you as a possibility, and I will be polite, is so far wrong they may aswell be a flat earther.
This same reasoning also applies to 10 ( Santorini's 4inch handling room hit ).
Number 3 ( the boat deck fire ). Was just that. A fire. Probably confined just to the boat deck and MAYBE some of the fcsle underneath. The mags were 5 decks down below this fire and aft. All hatches as we have heard, were shut tight. By the time Hood was lost the fire was burning itself out as the ready use and UP ammo was expended. Again. Made a mess and probably hurt or killed many brave sailors, but no danger to the ship.
Number 6 ( Through the main 12inch belt ). Well at the barings Hood was sailing at there was simply no way to penetrate the main belt. Had she finished her turn...and it is a BIG maybe.....there was a small possibility this could happen. However where she was at the moment of impact, the Naval Ballistic Limit of the plate was simply too high for Bismarck's shell to overwhelm at that point.
So we are left with 7 and 8. A torpedoing shell beneath the main belt or a hit through the mid 7inch belt, with both hits abreast the forward part of the aft engine room, roughly in line with the main mast.
These are THE ONLY 2 THEORIES that fit ALL the evidence when brought together. There are absolutely NO OTHER THEORIES that remain possible other than these 2.
You could make strong persuasions for either. Drachifinel, ( who incidentally has come to the same conclusion of a shell into the aft engine room, though via a different insertion method ) favours a torpedoing shell. I favour the 7 inch belt.
I will try to explain why. We know due to the venting through the aft engine room, that the aft bulkhead was damaged. There is a way of getting under the belts here at the right angle and range to possibly directly enter the aft mag sets BUT due to the fwd venting and the damage fwd of the bulkhead we can be fairly sure that didn't happen.
In Drachifinel's video he favours a torpedoing shot, due to a "trough" appearing abreast the mainmast area due to bow wake, allowing a shell falling short but close enough to the ship to enter the bulge and go underneath the belt.
Now I say this is problematic. There have been pictures posted apparently showing this trough. I have posted just as many pictures showing no trough. There is ALWAYS a trough present when the ship is turning at speed, on the inside side of the turn ( So if turning port the trough would be port side and vice versa ) but very rarely when travelling in a straight line. The bow wake on Hood up the side of the ship is altered from what would normally be expected by the fairly significant bulge that starts at the upper edge of the main belt.
The trough argument itself will have to wait for another post and is an argument for another time, but EVEN IF a trough was there at speed ( Which is anecdotal at best ) the ship was turning to Port at the time of the fatal hit.
As an aside...there is talk of a flag of "2 blue" to change course to port 20 degrees, being raised but NOT lowered. The lowereing of the flag is the execute order. Now I always found this peculiar so I spoke to an ex RN friend who's Divisional Officer was a certain Ted Briggs. This is what he told me.
"There is a difference between “immediate execute” and “execute to follow”, depending on which yardarm the flag was hoisted, it could mean “immediate execute” without pulling the flag down. Hoisted on a different yardarm it wouldn’t be executed until it was pulled down."
So this adds some extra complexity to the story.
This is however academic as we know she was turning due to all 3 survivors confirming it, the rudder on the wreck locked in a turn to port and the possibility that POW had followed her into a port turn. When the ship turns to port at high speed she "heels" out, so her starboard side would drop lower to the sea.
According to the ships tests she would heel between 5 to 7 degrees in this turn and the heel would come before any turning motion. This would mean a torpedoing shell would have to land much farther from the ship to get under the belt and that's assuming it wasn't rendered a dud, such as the one found in POW's TDS, or having enough distance before the fuse went off. Even at the upper end of 0.06 second fuse time it is highly unlikely given the distance needed to travel that it would make it anywhere near the mags.
Although predicting the velocity and angle of a diving shell is EXTREMELY problematic, only the Japanese type 91 AP was designed for this and even then they were very far from predictable.
Trough or no trough this would seem to render an underwater hit HIGHLY speculative.
Now I want to make it clear. This is a plausible way of a shell getting into the ship. However due to the nature of predicting diving shell performance it is INCREDIBLY problematic.
So what about the 7 inch belt hit? Well the German shell can go clean through this at the barings at the time of Hood's loss and at any range you care to choose between 16,000 and 19,000yards. It will do this whilst only being decapped and be otherwise undamaged and whilst also retaining a large proportion of it's forward velocity, say around 1000ft/second. It is then faced with a flat of 2inch laminated HT steel on the flat, equivalent to only about 1inch of STS and a slope of 2inch HT at a 30 degree angle from the vertical.
Above the slope the flat DID NOT extend all the way to the hull and it was covered only by 1/4inch plate. For these purposes it may aswell have been tissue paper. If the shell hits the flat there's A CHANCE that it will just gouge across horizontally or at best deflected.
However if it hits the upper part of the slope ( It can do this with Hood's heel and the fact it is travelling with a longtitudinal aspect into the ship ), it hits the slope at close to the surface normal of the plate, it will go creaming through like a hot knife through butter and with an average fuse of 0.035 seconds delay, go shooting right into the centre of the aft engine space, pointed right at the aft bulkhead behind which is the new enlarged mag. It can either go straight through the bulkhead and enter the mag itself OR more likely, detonate whilst pointed at the aft bulkhead, sending superheated chunks of 15inch AP shell, through the splinter matting and 3/4 inch plate, into the magazine and setting off the chain of events as explained earlier.
Now why in particular do I favour this? Well aside from the problems with the diving shell, the issue with Hood's slope was known about before she was commisioned. Funnily enough the same issue was rectified later on HMS Renown.
In 1919 they tested the magazine armour protection behind Hood's mid 7 inch belt at the equivalent range of 20k yards. ( It is VITAL you understand that Hood's shells had a superior verticle penetration characteristic than Bismarck's shells ).The test shell went clean through the angled 7inch plate ( angled 8 degrees more than on the part of the ship we are discussing ), through the plates representing the slope and internal bulkhead and detonated on plates representing the magazine crown. This would have destroyed the real ship.
They redid the tests after adding a 3 inch solid HT plate above the slope, representing going all the way to the hull edge. Upon firing the same shell at the same range, this extra plate SUCCESFULLY deflected the shell. The ship would have survived this hit.
As ships of that era were designed to fight broadside on, they added this extra armour abreast BOTH THE FWD AND AFT magazine sets. They did NOT add it abreast the engine and boiler spaces. These remained with their original protection. It was felt that the engine spaces, had enough redundancy that losing a few was not a catastrophic problem to the ship, whereas losing a magazine would destroy her. They made this sacrifice so as not to add weight they desperately needed to save.
I get the impression they had every intention of adding the extra protection for the engine spaces at a later date but they never did. What they didn't allow for was shells travelling up the longtitudinal axis of the ship. A shell travelling like this had relatively little to stop it getting deep into the ship. This made the decision to extend the 4inch HA mags as they did even more catastrophic as they had basically bypassed the ships own protection system.
They knew it then. It was felt the chances of that exact hit were so tiny that it was worth taking the chance. They came to regret it and they knew it after her loss. By then they were scrambling to , as our American friends say "cover their a55" and the ship's reputation was thrown to the wolves.
So whilst the 2 theories are valid, I favour this one based on the evidence and the likelihood of it being correct. Though even saying this, the variables that had to come together just right for this outcome to happen, are shockingly complicated. The ship being hit in combat wasn't bad luck. The effect of the hit at just that moment, in just that place, at just the correct angle and speed, and with the fact that that aft secondary mag set had been modified in 1940, is what makes it catastrophically bad luck.
END QUOTE:
Pete
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